Gingerbread Soldiers with Passion Fruit Eggs

Step 1

First, preheat your oven to 180C (160C fan). Prepare a large baking tray by lining it with baking (non-stick greaseproof) paper.

Step 2

In a small pan, heat together your butter, caster sugar and syrup. Whilst they’re heating, weigh the flour, baking powder and ginger in a bowl. Once the syrupy mix has just started to simmer and all ingredients are dissolved together, add this to the bowl. Mix into a hot dough.

Step 3

Press this dough down onto your baking tray until roughly half a centimetre thick. You can roll it with a rolling pin if it’s too hot.

Step 4

Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the edges are just blushing golden brown.

Step 5

As soon as it’s baked, it will still be soft. So cut it into your soldier shapes – or any shape you like, really. I like rectangles. Leave to cool.

Step 6

Mix your cream cheese with your icing sugar in a small bowl until smooth. This is your eggs’ ‘white’.

Step 7

Cut the tops off all your passion fruits, just as if they were soft-boiled eggs. Sieve the contents of one single fruit and discard (or eat) the pips. Mix the juice with enough icing sugar to make it gloopy but not overly sweet. This is your ‘yolk’.

Step 8

Scoop out all the contents of the other 5 fruits, then divide evenly between them all again. Layer with the ‘white’ icing, then add a wee drizzle of ‘yolk’ icing on top.

Step 9

Serve with the gingerbread soldiers and teaspoons to scoop out the fruit at the bottom.

Enjoy!